Free The Witch and the Gentleman by J.R. Rain Page B

my laptop off my lap. “Does the name Rose mean anything to you, Conn?”
    The image of Conn had been replaced by the tombstone, but I sensed very strongly that Conn had sat up himself. “Rose is my mother’s name. How did you know that?”
    “Does...does her tombstone say ‘Our Loving Rose’?”
    There was a long pause. “How...How did you know that, Allison?”
    “I just saw it.”
    I also saw him remove his sunglasses and bury his face in his hands. As he wept, I felt a wave of unconditional love, and I knew what it was and who it was for.
    “Your mother, I think, is sending me love for you. A lot of love. More love than I’ve ever felt in all my life.”
    I had to stop because now the tears were coming and I couldn’t speak, and Conn and I spent the next few minutes weeping silently over the phone.
     
     
     
    Chapter Twenty
     
     
    It was late, and I’d been drinking.
    I was sitting in the Spirit Chair with the police report summary, which I’d picked up earlier and had read a half-dozen times. There was something in there. Something that the police had either failed to see or had missed completely.
    I let my subconscious work on that. Or my Higher Self, or whatever I wanted to call it. Some things couldn’t be rushed. Some things were presented to us with perfect timing and it was our job to wait patiently, yet expectantly.
    And I was very, very expectant that I would find an answer hidden within this summary.
    Mostly, as I sat in the Spirit Chair, I was troubled. Troubled in a good way, perhaps. I was thinking about my experience with Conn. I’d never before shown signs of medium-ship and this was new to me.
    Also, her love for him had been overwhelmingly pure and beautiful, and made me, on some level, wish I had a child of my own, to love so completely.
    Of course, I needed a man for that, and I hadn’t felt like dating since my last two disasters. And by disasters , I meant my last two relationships had ended horribly. Both men had been murdered.
    One had been killed by a silver-tipped arrow. And my last boyfriend, a man I had been engaged to and still loved and was still having problems moving past, had been killed by what is known as a dim-mak , or in martial arts speak, a death-blow .
    Crazy stuff, I know. But the pain was real. For both men. Well, one man and one vampire. Yes, my relationship with Victor had been pleasure-based, and we both sort of used each other, too, but I’d grown close to him quickly. Hell, instantly. And I missed him like crazy.
    Caesar Marquez, my brave and sexy boxer, had been a different story. We had so much in common, and I had been certain he and I would grow old together, although I was always— always —nervous about boxing. Turned out, I had good reason to be. He and I had discussed kids, too. Building a family together, a life together.
    Thinking of him now, especially after a few glasses of wine, wasn’t a smart thing to do. The booze was liable to reduce me to tears for many hours, and leave me curled in the fetal position at the foot of my bed, or on the phone with Samantha, sobbing like a teenager while she made sympathetic noises. Samantha was a good friend, although it had taken her a while to come around. Same with me, I guessed. I didn’t make friends easily, but when I did, well, I bonded with them forever.
    So, I forced myself to think of something else...and ended up thinking of some one else.
    Conn.
    What was his deal? Who was he? I had resisted doing too much research on the man. Yes, I had made sure he wasn’t a creep, but beyond that, I didn’t know much about him, and I didn’t want to know much about him. And if I was honest with myself, I would admit to the reason why: because I wanted him to tell me himself.
    Perhaps over wine.
    I sighed and shook my head and wiped the tears that had pooled in that small space between my upper cheekbone and lower eyelid.
    Too soon, I thought. The pain of losing Caesar was still too raw. I needed more